


Guns in the Valley

by rainbowagnes



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Wolverine (Movies), X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Dinner Party before the storm, F/M, Found Family, Marvel Universe, Post-Relationship, Pretending to be a family, Pringles, Rey deserves better, Superheroes, X-Men AU - Freeform, angst and pain, mescal, sort of, super powers, they all do
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-28
Updated: 2017-04-28
Packaged: 2018-10-25 01:56:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10754337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainbowagnes/pseuds/rainbowagnes
Summary: A super-late piece for the rebelcaptain appreciation week prompt "Family," combined with "AU of choice."What happens when the world's best assassin, a women with the destructive power of a nuclear bomb, An Alzheimer's sticken telepath and a little girl with knives in her hands have to pretend to be a normal, functional family for an evening?Based loosely off of "Logan"





	Guns in the Valley

**Author's Note:**

> Jyn is very loosely modeled on Jean Grey, with a different background and similar power levels.
> 
> Cassian is Logan, but he's The Coyote instead of The Wolverine because wolverines have a very northerly range.
> 
> Everyon's been aged up. Jyn and Cassian are early forties (well, Cassian physically is), Chirrut's in his seventies.
> 
>  
> 
> For purposes of this fic, picture Rey/Laura being played by a part-Latina actress. (Laura actually wasn't in the original movie, which is a bone I have to pick with the movie makers.) I realized immediately the squick-iness of having a Latina character be au'd as a white little girl, so consider Rey/Laura race bent.

_"Joey, there's no living with, with a killing. There's no going back from it. Right or wrong, it's a brand, a brand that sticks. There's no going back. Now you run on home to your mother and tell her, tell her everything's alright, and there aren't any more guns in the valley."-_ Shane _, 1953_

\----------

It's late afternoon when he wakes up, his mind foggy from a long, deep sleep. The first thing he notices is the warm weight splayed across him, snoring softly. Rey. She's still wearing the sunglasses she made him buy. Wisps of her fine hair fly in the wind, and she's balled up her jacket to use as a pillow.

"Sleeping beauty wakes up." Jyn reaches beneath the seat and tosses him a paper Minit Stop bag. He catches it before it can hit Rey.

Inside are several lukewarm bottles of water, apples, some energy bars and a tube of Pringles. He snaps the top off a bottle of water and downs it without stopping to breathe, resolving to save the Pringles for Rey.

"How'd you get this stuff?"

"Mutant Jedi mind trick." She glares at him a bit from behind the wheel, and he realizes how much he's missed her glower. "You know how."

"Are they gonna be able to trace it?"

"Thirty bucks of crap goes missing in a Minit Stop six hours outside of Topeka. No one cares."

"What about the car?"

"After I saved your arse in Oklahoma City, you and the professor passed out. Rey and I had to load you in the car."

Oklahoma City. Damn. He turns to see Chirrut asleep in the back seat, looking almost peaceful.

"Wh-"

She cuts him off. "Look, Cassian, you're the one who's got some explaining to do. I thought you where lying low in Juarez with Malbus and the professor."

"I was."

"Next time I hear from you you're in the fight of your life in fucking Oklahoma city. Where's Malbus?'

"Imperitech attacked us back in Juarez. They took Malbus hostage."

"Fuck." She slams on the gas, wills the metal of the car to go faster, as if that will make some kind of difference. "Bloody fucking hell. They got the best tracker in the world following us."

They ride in silence for a while, Cassian trying to undo Rey's sunglasses from the knots of her hair. She must be exhausted, because she just curls in closer to him, small fingers wrapped around the lapels of his jacket. She must be exhausted, because she's eleven years old and hasn't had the chance to sleep in two days. Invulnerable or not, Cassian feels a bone deep sense of guilt for putting her through all this.

He feels a bone deep sense of guilt for her very existence, even if it was not him who had a hand in her making.

"How's he doing? The professor?" Jyn finally breaks the silence, her voice stretched. "Can't be easy on him, loosing Malbus."

"Not well. Alzheimer's . . . it's slow, but it's eating at him. So much of him was his mind. So much of him was Malbus. He's been taking suppressant for the last couple years."

Alzheimer's. The eventual fate of every telepath who lived long enough. Jyn hadn't been able to face the professor when he started forgetting her, so selfishly mired in the knowledge that one day, that would be her as well.

But even if he lived through this particular piece of hell, Cassian would die from the adamantium grafted into his body. A boring, painful death, at the hands of man rather than his mutation.

Cassian had been born in Texas in 1830. He was older than Texas was American, once the lanky Tejano boy who had cut his claws on the blood of the Alamo without really knowing what any of it meant. He'd been a grown man by the time the Civil War rolled around, but he'd been an abolitionist spy for years, wandering the dusty flats and silently leaving hundreds dead. Texas was a part of his blood and the calcium in his bones. It had birthed him, raised him, turned him into a soldier and forged him into a weapon. If there was anything to assure him he would survive the fight with Impericorp, it was that he was sure he would die in Texas as well. Not in fucking Nebraska.

Imperitech had already replaced Rey's bone claws with adamantium blades of own. One day, on the slim chance she lived long enough, she's be staring down the barrel of the exact same gun.

"What do you know about her?"

That she shouldn't exist. That her life will be a living hell for as long as she does. That

"Likes Pringles. Flowers. Wanted to stop to pick them. Collects comics. Killed eight men in about ten seconds flat."

"I saw that. But who is she?"

"Classified."

"Is she yours, Cassian? Is she fucking yours? Is that your daughter, right there, lying on your lap and covered in the blood of men who tried to kill her?"

"Jyn. Jyn, you know that's impossible."

"Until about two hours ago I thought you were alone in the universe, Cassian. And then a little girl with claws changed all that." There's a look in her eyes when she sees Rey, hope and sorrow at the same time, and he's left to think of the one thing he couldn't giver her before everything went to hell. The thing they couldn't give each other.

"Whatever it was, we all went sterile long before she was born. Must have brewed her up in lab south of the border."

"Don't talk about her like that." He sounds angrier than he has in a while, tightening his hold on Rey.

Jyn breathes out a long sigh and repositions her hands on the steering wheel. "I shouldn't have. Look, the Americans had your DNA. They must have just sold it out to Imperitech."

"Jyn."

"Yes?"

"They had your DNA too. They had all of ours, but I think Rey is yours to."

"No."

"Look at her," he tells her, but she just stares resolutely at the road, as if she hasn't spent hours looking at Rey and subconsciously wondering the exact same thing. "There's so much of you in her."

"I'm sure there's other gringas in the world with dark hair and funny accents."

"She tried to pull the famous Jyn Erso mutant Jedi mind trick."

"What?"

"Tried to convince a clerk who caught her stealing Pringles that she had nothing in her hands. He bought it."

"Must have taken pity on a lost kid. She isn't mine."

"He looked dazed. Confused. Exactly like when you-"

One of the giant trucks they've been sharing road space with barrels sideways, slamming right into the car. For a split second, Cassian's head slams into the side of the car.

Then everything stops. Jyn has lifted her hands from the wheel, and Cassian watches as the truck rights itself, the metal detritus from the crash rejoining it's original vehicle, the back of the car rejoining. A sliver of her power, but it's the professor's life at stake, Rey's life at stake, and Cassian can see how nervous she is.

The world goes back to normal speed, the truck barreling sideways across the freeway and Jyn promptly swerving across the lanes until she drives off the side of the road into a ditch.

His sense of relief is soon abated by a sharp stabbing pain in his neck. He looks down to see Rey, shocked and awake, her claws cutting straight into his neck. The impact of the shock must have woken her and scared her enough to be ready for a fight.

Her claws retreat back into her tiny fists, and Cassian prays his healing factor is at least good enough to deal with this.

"It's all right, Rey. Jyn stopped the crash." Her pulse slows down.

"Damn it to bloody fucking hell." Jyn sounds exhausted.

"Language!" The impact must have woken Chirrut up as well. "You have a child here to think of!"

"I'm sure she's heard worse."

"I don't care. Your job is to be better, so she can be better."

"Better than the two of us?"

He gives off a sound that's half chuckle and half snort, but Jyn is distracted by an accident on the other side of the freeway. Her stunt with the truck saved there skins, but it also send the truck careening across the high way and smashing another vehicle over the side of the road. There's probably some Professor Imwe-style metaphor to be found here, if she looks hard enough, but she doesn't want to.

"Fuck it." She reaches to unlatch the door.

"Jyn! I just told yo-"

"We sent another car flying off the road." She can quickly see that there's an attached silver trailer as well, the lock clearly busted open from impact. Four gorgeous horses wander the high way.

"No." Cassian knows what she's going to do before even she does. "No, we can't waste time."

"Driver chooses the route. Shotgun just gets the radio." She pulls the car back onto the high way and drives across.

"What if they're dangerous?"

She spares a moments to focus her energy on reaching out. Four horses, of course, but three people as well. A woman, mid fifties, a man a few years older, teenage son. Shara, Kes, Poe.

"Completely harmless. Parents are ex-military, but they run a farm now." The closer they get, the more details rise to the top. Shara is Guatemalan, Kes is Cuban. Poe is sixteen and already logging long hours in flight training.

He breathes an audible sigh of relief as Jyn pulls the car to a stop.

"Need any help?" She unlatches the door and gets out, knowing Cassian will have no choice but to follow.

The woman walks over. Shara. She's older but in excellent shape, wearing a military flight jacket and silver hoop earrings that glint in the searchlight. She has a lot of silver streaked curly hair.

"Shara Bey. This is my husband Kes, and over their my son Poe." Shara has an exceptionally firm handshake but a warm smile. "Thank you so much for pulling over."

"Lianna, Carlos, and Kira Suarez. And my dad Chuck, in the back seat." Chirrut waves helpfully.

"That truck did a number on us both. Weird the way it veered clear across the street like that."

Cassian chuckles behind her. "The world is full of strange things."

"Any way we can help you out?"

Shara shrugs. "Most pressing problem right now is the horses. If you can figure out a way to get them back?"

"I'm not sure the four of us city slickers from El Paso could be much help. Kira here loves horses."

Please play along, Jyn prays. The girl has understandably little understanding of human interactions, but right now Rey needs to turn into Kira Suarez, the ordinary girl from El Paso who loves horses.

"You do, huh?"

She gives an impossible wide-eyed nod. Shara laughs. "I'm sorry for burdening you with our problems. We got kind people and we asked them to be miracle workers."

"Actually , maybe that's what we are." Cassian waves at the street, where the horses- they're even more beautiful up close, healthy, glossy specimens that look like they're meant for epic poems and cowboy ballads, not a dusty stretch of Nebraska highway- are walking back towards the Dameron's trailer. Jyn sneaks a look back to where Chirrut is leaning against the car, head bows in concentration. A miracle worker, all right. A miracle worker named Chuck.

"Ay dios mio!" Shara's husband walks over, wiping sweat from his brow. "Fucking miracle all right. Never seen anything like it." "Kes! Company!" She shoots him a mock angry glare.

"Apologies." He shakes there hands, Rey's included, and then Poe does the same, in a perfect show of gentlemanliness. "I'm Kes. This here is our boy Poe." He seems a little more at a loss for words than his wife. "It's too much to presume, but could you help us out a bit here?"

They get the horses back into the trailer with minimum effort, probably because the poor things are being heavily placated by Chirrut. And it's easy to get the trailer upright and back on the road with a few telekinetic nudges from Jyn. Metal has always been the easiest thing for her to control, anyway. When the Damerons aren't looking she melts and re-forges the lock on the back of the trailer as well.

Shara gives Rey a handful of apple slices to feed the horses, and she giggles at the feeling of it. For a moment, she looks happy, purely happy and nothing else. "What's your name, sweetie?" Shara reached down and gives her a few more apple slices.

Rey doesn't answer. She just continues to stare Shara in the eyes with her unflinching brown gaze.

"Sweetie, what's your name?"

"Nadie." No one. Jyn notices a few seconds to late.

"She's just tired and hungry. We started off in Amarillo this morning." Cassian's senses were always a little better clued in at things like this. Jyn was always there fore the fighting, but pretending to be an ordinary, functional human with ordinary concerns? Not a chance.

He picks up Rey, and she calmly settles back into his arms. Something inside Jyn twists with a certain kind of jealousy.

Maybe Rey feels a commonality with him, something that runs deeper than claws and invulnerability. Cassian's spent two hundred years thinking himself alone in the universe, only to find that his worst possible nightmare has come to life. There's some one else like him.

"You know how kids can be." He smiles indulgently. Always the better actor.

"Ahh, of course, sweetie. Long drive from El Paso."

"It's taking a toll on me too. Why is every town in the United Staes the same? It makes it impossible to follow these maps."

"You're Texan, honey. Texas is America." She can't miss a chance to rib him a little. If the Dameron's weren't around there would be some kind of smart come back about being older than Texas was American, but casually letting something like that drop seemed like a good way to immediately drop their "ordinary family" ruse.

"Mexico is America too. This entire hemisphere is America. It's only the Estados Unidos that thinks they're the only ones."

"Damn right!" Shara laughs as Poe hollers "Guatemala reperesent!" at the passing cars."

"How old is your little one? Middle school, if I had to guess."

"Ten," Jyn says, right as Cassian says "Eleven."

"Ten," Cassian corrects himself, "but she'll be eleven in a few weeks."

"In that case, why don't you come back to our place and celebrate? Dinner's on us."

"That isn't neces-" Jyn begins, but Shara cuts her off again.

"Oh please. We would have been fucking screwed if it weren't for you, and there aren't any towns for miles. It's nothing fancy, but there's enchiladas in the freezer and beer in the fridge, and that's better than any minimart."

They have limited options. All of their resources are burned up in Oklahoma City, and while Jyn was planning on performing a few convenience store mind tricks, this seems like a much better option for Rey.

They pile back into their cars and Jyn follows the Damerons up the road.

"We're not here to make friends."

"Really? All that chatting 'em up and you don't want friends?'

"It served a purpose."

"Are they really just purposes to you?"

"If it helps us get north with Rey, then yes."

Chirrut leans over between the two of them."

"We aren't all invulnerable, Captain. Rey's eleven. I'm an old man. We need to eat something." Chirrut has woken up from the backseat with all the commotion, and it occurs to Jyn that she's going to have to explain his presence to the Damerons as well.

"This is very dangerous." He's arguing with her, which can lead to only one already forgone conclusion. She can play him like a fiddle after all these years.

"I looked into their heads. They're good people."

"Yes, but they also aren't idiots. How long's it going to be until they realize there's something off about this little family and call Child Protective Services?

"We eat, we go before that happens. Rey can be Kira Suarez, right?'

"Si."

\--oOo--

Jyn quickly decides that the Dameron's description of "nothing fancy" requires adjustment. They practically block off the door to the kitchen, leaving Poe to start up a game of two-on-two soccer in the back yard (Poe and Rey against Jyn and Cassian, who allow themselves to be destroyed.) Poe introduced Rey to their white and orange cat, so chubby he almost looks circular.

When they're finally allowed back into the dining room, the table is heaped with stew, steak, rice, black beans, a steamer of tamales, tortillas, the kinds of sliced fruits and avocado Jyn knows don't come cheap. She immediately feels slightly embarrassed by their generosity.

Cassian is holding both of Rey's hands, probably trying to prevent her from digging in prematurely. They sit down, Poe says grace, and Rey promptly sloshes a bowl of beans onto her plate. She's already tucking in with her fingers when Cassian puts a fork in her hand and spoons some of the beans back onto his own plate.

"I am sorry. It has been a long day."

"Quite alright. She can have as much as she wants. There's more of everything in the kitchen."

"Thank you very much for having us. I think your definition of "nothing fancy" is very different then my own. It is very generous."

He looks over at Jyn, who is doing her very best to stuff her face in a less obvious way.

Like mother like daughter.

"We miss having company. It gets lonely out here, nothing but Imperitech corn and gringos for miles. So thank you for coming over." Shara sounds almost wistful.

"Imperitech?" Rey's mouth has dropped open. If he hadn't been better trained, Cassian's would have as well. Of course the same conglomerate that turned him into the Coyote, that made Rey, would have roots all the way out here.

"They've patented most of the crops around here, sweetie. Yavin Family Farm is one of the last hold outs." Shara reaches into the steamer. "Do you want another tamale? What have your parents been feeding you? You're eating like you've never seen food before."

Rey holds out her plate and gladly excepts.

"Growing girl. One of these days she's going to be taller than her mother." Jyn shoots him a glare, but the Damerons just laugh heartily.

"It's because she didn't eat her greens." Chirrut seems rather present of mind.

"Papa!" She playfully slaps the air. "I don't have any control over my genetics."

"But you do have control over your table manners! Elbows off the table, Lianna!"

"All the same, it's great to have you around. Shara and I are both ex-military, and while it's been nice to have peace to raise Poe in . . . I miss my squad." He takes a long drink. "Forgive me for imposing, but the two of you are ex-military, right?"

Cassian chuckles. "How did you know?'

"There's a soldier's gaze in you both. You carry the war around in your eyes. Your father, too."

"It is hard not to carry the war around, after it happens." Chirrut smiles. "I find most people never truly let it go."

"Don't get me wrong- I don't want to go back." He smiles, shaking his head. "I've found a good life here, raising my son. I'm sure you two feel the same with your lovely daughter."

"Exactly." Jyn smirks at him a little over the top of her water glass. "He did it for the cause, but I don't think Cassian was ever born to be a soldier."

"But." Kes continues, pausing to construct his thoughts. "But I miss the squad I had. We called ourselves the Pathfinders. Kindered spirits, you know? I miss those people. And you two? You two remind me of my squad."

A long, heavy silence. And then Jyn of all people looks Kes straight in the eyes. "You remind me of my squad. The best soldiers are good people first."

Cassian stands up, water glass in hand, but Shara drags him down again.

"We need something stronger." She sends Kes to root through the pantry instead. He returns with a bottle of mango juice and a familiar red-stoppered bottle.

"Is that what I think it is?'

"Knew you were a mescal man too." He pours Cassian a generous glass. "Liana?"

"In the words of my aunt Mildred, 'just a tipple."

"So do you want three fingers or four?"

More laughter. Poe helps himself to both a glass of juice and mescal. He blanches after the first taste.

"That stuff is not meant for drinking."

"It's a good job you hate the stuff now, son." He leans in conspiratorially to Cassian. "Pray it lasts."

"How do you drink it and live?"

"Practice."

Cassian looks down to see Rey flinch from the smell of alcohol. Of course. To her it probably just signifies hospitals and disinfectant. He moves his glass away and motions for Jyn to to the same.

He stands up. "Is it alright if I-"

"Go right ahead."

"Kira, you might want to stand on your chair for this one."

Cassian picks up his glass. "Arriba!"

They reach up and clink the tops of their glasses together, Rey leaning precociously far over the table to do so, Chirrut contently sitting removed from the mess.

"Abajo!" The clink the bottoms.

"Al centro!" Touch the middles together. Kes's generous pouring means the liquid sloshes happily around.

"Pa'dentro!" They down the drinks. The nice-quality mescal leaves a pleasant, familiar burn down the back of his throat.

"The next toast!" Shara smiles as she stands up. "To the birthday girl!" They raise their glasses. "To unexpected guests!" Another round of raised glasses. "To friendship!" A final round. "To family!"

\---

They sing a rousing round of "Feliz Compleanos" as they clear the table. Poe has by far the best singing voice. Chirrut sounds like a dying frog. Rey loves it.

"I'm thinking I should probably drive. You get a bit loopy with alcohol." She leans against him as she dries plates, and he kisses the top of her head. It's meant to be an ordinary "sated husband" gesture, but she bristles against him.

"I think I can handle my mescal. I'm Mexican. We drink to live."

"I'm British. We drink to die."

"Wait. Who said anything about driving?" Shara looks up from some kind of secret preparation.

Rey points accusingly at Jyn.

"I don't want it to seem like we're kidnapping you, but you can just stay here. The nearest motel's half an hour from hear, and it isn't even that nice."

"Are you sure? You've already been so kind." This feels like too much to Jyn. It's more family than she's felt in years.

"Think nothing of it. There's guest room upstairs and a fold-out in the living room. We can put Kira and Chuck up there and you two down here."

"Almost wish we could stay forever."

"Why don't you?" What has El Paso got that we don't?"

"Sunlight." Jyn offers.

"Pshawww."

"Taquerias." Cassian tries.

"You got us there."

Kes comes back inside.

"Something strange happened with the pipes. One of them broke, I think."

"Fix it in the morning. We have a birthday to celebrate."

"We're going to have really low water pressure, and we have company. I'll just go fix it now."

"I'll come with you." Shara leaves to follow him, but Jyn stops her.

"Nonsense. I was an engineer in the military. This should be fixed in a jiffy." Meaning she plans on telekinetically forcing the metal back into shape, but who can tell in the dark?

"Is this really all right with you Lianna? It's a trek out in the dark, and-"

"I'll come with her." Cassian smiles. "The more the merrier, right?"

\---oOo----

After dinner, Shara cuts Rey a massive slice of pie and Poe lets her look through her comic books. The little girl doesn't exactly look peaceful, but she's still calmer than Jyn has ever seen her. She should be fine.

Jyn laces her boots and puts her leather jacket back on. It's getting nippy, but Chirrut is outside, sitting on the Dameron's porch swing.

"Are you leaving me here like a blind old man?"

"I'll be right back, Proffessor."

"Such a strange word from my own daughter's mouth."

She curses under her breath while Chirrut laughs. She's almost down the steps when he calls back to her.

"Lianna?"

"Yes, dad?"

"That was the most wonderful evening I have had in a very long time. Thank you very much."

"It's the least I could do."

"That's what having a family is like. You aren't alone in the world."

She stops. Something tells her this conversation is important, even if she can't figure out how. Even if she knows' she's going to back in forty-five minutes, probably trying to explain one of Chirrut's episodes to the Damerons.

"Professor, you were the first one to show me what a family was like. Growing up in the Brotherhood . . . Saw had some love for me, but it wasn't the same. I was still a weapon for a cause. But you gave me a home."

Painful memories, ones she's tried to suppress. Her childhood as a soldier for a very certain kind of army, until the US government decided she was too dangerous to let walk free.

"I was twenty one. I was drugged up on suppressants in a max security prison, and you gave me a job. A place in the world. I wasn't a child, but I still needed a place to walk home too. So thank you for that."

"You were a good physics teacher, Jyn. It's because of you that Jubilee actually passed that class."

She walks off to join Kes and Cassian, who are checking flashlights by the shed, the night thicker and darker than had ever seemed possible. As they walk off, Jyn waves at the professor, like she used to do for a laugh with her friends. Knowingly, he waves back.

\---oOo----

Dr. Orson Krennic already hates the state of Nebraska. What he needs is a glass- no, a bottle, several- of fine Argentinian wine in his walled-off mansion in Mexico City. Not three days in a car chasing a failed lab experiment through the heart of this godforsaken country.

The tracker has not been helpful. He's pretended to comply, following the Imperitech principles he once lived by before meeting that scum Imwe, but he'd thrown Imperitech for a loop in Oklahoma and allowed them to escape. Baze Malbus is a traitor to the cause, and if Krennic could have had his way, the bastard would already be dead.

Instead he sits in the back of the van with irritating indifference.

"You will have one last opportunity to submit to the Empire! Tell us where they are."

Malbus stays silent.

"You know how dangerous those things are. You know that they shouldn't be allowed to walk with ordinary people."

"They are people, not things." The first words he's spoken in hours. "Not things."

"They are weapons. The child has killed forty of our men. Forty! I am just trying to create peace here." He looks Malbus straight in the eyes. "Please. Help me."

Malbus leans forward in his cage until his face is terrifyingly close to Krennic's.

"You were the ones who sharpened a knife. Why are you surprised when it cuts?" He spits in Krennic's face.

"Bastard. You won't live to see tommorrow."

He slams the door on his way out.

Vader is waiting for him outside the trailer.

"I have heard a most disturbing report from CEO Palpatine, Doctor."

There isn't anyone Krennic hates more than the security head of Imperitech. He hasn't even seen the man's face, but Vader is still the link between his work in Jacu and the head of the operation.

"Get on with it." He doesn't have time for any of this.

"We have received some disturbing information about the girl. The child who was scheduled to be euthanised two weeks ago due to her unpredictable nature."

"No one could have predicted that the driver-" That the ordinary cargo driver would take pity on her, risk his life to help her escape.

"He is dead, and yet the girl lives, against company orders. A failure on your part, Doctor. Palpatine will not be pleased."

Krennic bites his tongue and decided to leave out the fault that it was Vader's own fault the girl was still alive right now. It was Vader who'd let her escape in Coyote's limousine and started this whole wild goose chase up in the first place.

God he needs a drink.

"She is considerably more dangerous and unpredictable than the original project suggested."

"You wanted a weapon. You wanted a version of Andor you could auction off to the highest bidder, and I gave you one. I am not at fault here."

"You were never authorized to hybridize the DNA of any class-1 mutants. We know that the girl's female genetic donor is Jyn Erso."

"We cannot completely clone someone, and Andor proved to have a moral compass that was difficult to work with. Jyn Erso's DNA fit the specifics."

Jyn Erso. Galen Erso had been one of Krennic's oldest friends, a brilliant scientist cursed with psychic episodes that gave him terrifying visions. He'd made the original gene suppression serum, used it on himself and his eight-year-old daughter. It had killed him. It had made her indestructibly powerful, a weapon on the side of Saw Gerrera's brotherhood of mutants. A nuclear bomb dressed like a 5'4'' woman.

In America they called her the Dark Pheonix. South of the border she was Estrella de la Muerte.

It's lightening fast. Krennic feels his throat beginning to tighten in on itself, and within seconds he's on the ground, choking.

"Your meddling has cost Imperitech hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue. Be careful not to choke on your aspirations, Doctor."

Vader lets him go, and he collapses on the grass choking.

"Whatever your current failings, Palpatine needs this done. We're sending in CSN-24."

"Is that truly the best path we can take, Vader? CSN-24 has been proven to be-"

"Effective, Doctor, which have proven yourself not to be. Wake him up."

Vader stalks off into the night, leaving Krennic still gasping for breath. CSN-24 had been the project to replace the children. A killer without a mind, a conscience. Andor without the parts that made him difficult to work with. They had to keep the thing sedated in between uses just so he wouldn't kill the techs. He terrified the living daylights out of Krennic.

"Fuck it." He walked towards the truck CSN was kept in, comatose submerged in blue gel. The very image of Cassian Andor, but unseeing and lobotamised. Unfeeling.

Perfect for the job at hand.

There were few people CSN was programmed not to kill. Krennick was one of them, which explained why he had the odious job at hand. He picked up a loaded syringe and stabbed him with a little more force than was technically necessary. He looked just like Andor, after all, and Andor had been the source of Krennic's grief for decades.

The things black eyes blinked open.

"Buenos Dias. We have a job for you."

\---oOo---

Shara runs Rey a bubble bath and leaves her with fluffy towels and a change of clothes. The clothes are far to big., so Rey put the outfit Coyote had bought her in Oklahoma City back on. It didn't have a noticeable amount of blood on it. She liked the look of the shirt with the flowers on it and the shiny red boots in the store window, but mainly she had liked the way that the mannequin's plastic hands were linked with the bigger mannequin's hands. It was plastic, but at least the plastic girl didn't have to be alone.

The clothes were stiff and itchy, but she loved them anyway. They were the second nice thing anyone had ever bought for her. The first was a rubber ball that the nice man who'd driven her out of the compound in Mexico City had given her. Bodhi Rook, he said his name was. He had had a kind smile, but he carried a lot of darkness around. She could tell from his loudest thoughts that he didn't want to be doing this job, that he knew what the company did. He was only doing it to pay the hospital bills of his sick mother Samirah.

When Rey had found him dead, strangled by the white man with the metal hand, her first thought had been Samirah. Her second had been to hide in the limousine of Coyote, the man Bodhi had told her might be her father.

She stands in front of the mirror and forces the tangles out of her hair. It's knotted, but it's also straight and there isn't too much of it. She carefully does it back up with the hair ties she keeps around her wrist. Three neat buns down the back of her head. Tied back like the driver. He'd come up with the hairstyle after almost losing her buying supplies the market in Zacatecas. Now she keeps the buns as a silent tribute to him, a promise that the name of a good man won't be forgotten.

In her jacket pocket, next to the photo of her family, Rey carries around a second piece of paper. A flyer for a Mexican boxing event, to see Coyote beat Greedo. "El Rey de Desierto." The king of the desert.

Her tag at the lab had said X-23. The nurses had given the other kids in the lab names, real names- Oscar and Margarita and Finn and Felicita. But they could never settle on a name for her, so she'd just been Rey. The King. After the King of the Desert. After the King of the Mutants, as the lab techs referred to Coyote. The crown jewel of Imperitech's work. The perfect soldier. The perfect killer, without anything else messy to get in the way.

The other kids could do all kinds of abilities. Finn, who made shields and forcefields appear from nowhere. Jessica, who flew. Oscar, who could charge anything with electricity, or Margarita, who made plants grow like she wanted them to, or Felicita, who controlled how a person felt just by looking at them. They had been raised by Imperitech as weapons, but they could do all sorts of other things as well.

Rey was meant to do one thing. They all were, but she was the only one who's biology mandated it. The knives in her hands were meant to cut, and they had.

"There's no living with the killing."

She looks in the mirror, trying to practice her American accent. "There's no going back after it. Right or wrong, it's a brand, a brand that stays."

She had thought that killing the men who had come for her might make her feel better. It just made her feel empty inside. They were gone, but there would always be more bad men to come looking for her.

She leaves the steamy warmth of the bathroom into the corridor, now drafty and chilly. It shocks her system awake.

The first room on the right is Poe's. It has a nice look to it, lots of wood and orange things and golden light. Like a teenager's room in the movies they let her watch on her birthday. He's bent over, doing homework with some kind of wires in his ears. She sneaks around him, her eyes immediately focused on the rows of gold and silver trophies that line a table. Planes, stars, tiny golden men. Not cool to touch, like metal should be. As plastic as everything else.

"Those are for flight. Aviation." Poe has set his homework down.

She gives him a blank look.

"You know, flying planes?"

"You are a pilot?" She used to dream of being in the sky, sometimes. She had discovered cracks in the compound where she could look at the night sky, but the smog from the city always obscured any stars. A pilot would get to see the stars all the time.

"Yeah, I guess so. My mom is, and I guess I just take after her."

"That is a good thing. She is a kind lady." Kinder than the British lady who had shown up and saved Rey from the Reavers, the British lady who Rey recognized from pictures in Impericorp files. Jyn Erso. Genetic Donor #2. They hadn't taught the children how to read, but Rey had learned how to by looking into the nurse's heads. And she knew that the British lady looked into people's heads as well. She hadn't given birth to her- that was a different woman, who had disappeared without a trace before Rey had even known her- but in some way, Jyn Erso was her mother. She didn't like it.

She wished Shara had been her mother instead, with her nice husband and round, fluffy cat and horses. If Shara had been her mother, then she wouldn't be able to hear people's thoughts. That would be a good thing.

"You parents seem cool."

She looked back at the device Poe was holding on his desk. It had long wires that emitted music. Tentatively, she picks up one of the wires. on the end of it is a round bulb. When she placed it next to her ear, the loudest music she's heard in her life comes blasting through.

"SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO NOW?"

She drops it in surprise.

"Oh, sorry buddy. I didn't realize how loud I'd cranked it up." He pointed at his eardrums. "A little hard of hearing, you know?" He fiddles with some details on the screen and hands the earphones back to her. The music is still loud, but enjoyable now.

"The indecision's bugging me. (Indecision me molesta.)

If you don't want me, set me free. (Si no me quieres, librame)

Exactly who I'm supposed to be (Dime! Que tengo ser?)

Don't know which clothes even fit me (Sabes que rope me quedar?"

"You like it?" He has to scream over the noise of the music.

She nods vigorously.

"Another Clash fan! Dad will be proud." He picks up the screen again. "I think you'll like this one."

This music is immediately different. Poppier, peppier, more electronic. She loves it just as much. Coyote isn't much of a music person, and truth be told the radio scares her a little, so she's mainly listened to old boleros that sound about a hundred years old for the last few days. A small hardship compared to others, but she's always like music.

"Do what you want but you're never gonna break me

Sticks and stones are never gonna shake me, oh, oh wa-woh

"Take me away (take me away)

A secret place (take me away)

A sweet escape (take me away)"

She's sad when the song is over. "Can you play it again?"

"Why don't you just borrow it for tonight?' He smiles. He has a nice smile, like he smiles just because he wants to and for no other reason. "Good?"

"Thank you." Already she's excited about the possibility of all that music.

She tries to wedge the player in her pocket, but it's not big enough. A wadded piece of card stock falls onto Poe's floor.

He picks it up for her.

"You dropped this."

She takes it from him and smoothes out the creases. It's an old photograph, going grainy, but she can still make out the faces of everyone in the photo. Two of the nurses, Maria and Soledad. And the ten other kids in the program, smiling because it was Oscar's birthday.

"Who are they?"

"Finn. Jessica. Rosa. Marco. Nathalie. Juan. Margarita. Oscar. Diego. Felicita." The names she has repeated over and over to herself for the last week, like a mantra. Finn and Jessica and Rosa and Marco and Nathalie and Juan and Margarita and Oscar and Diego and Felicita. She wants to make Imperitech pay for what they'd done to each and every one of them.

She points to a boy, the tallest and seemingly the oldest one, who stares at the camera with an unflinching dark gaze. "This is Finn. He is the leader. I have until Friday to find him."

"Who are they?"

"My family. I have to go back for them." The are her family, but the word doesn't seem to mean enough to cover everything she means.

Poe looks confused. "i though your family came with you. Your gramps, your old man, your mom."

"They are my family as well."

"Huh. Well, my Ma always said that family is as wide as what we make of it."

And then her fear turns on.

It flips like a switch within her. Rey has carried around a lingering sense of dread for as long as she can remember, a pool of dull fear that sits at the bottom of her stomach and the cold of her veins. But this is different. This is animal. This is something out in the night that's coming for her. Coming for Coyote, for papa. Coming for the Damerons for the crime of doing weapons pretending to be people kindness.

It's a snap, and she almost feels her claws come out. No. That will only scare Poe further. Stay calm. Have control. Uno, tres, cinco, siete, nueve, diez, ocho, seis, cuatro, dos uno. Breath in and out. She steadies herself.

"Go!" She finally breathes out, with a conviction that freezes him in his steps.

'What?"

"Go!" She repeats again, and it feels like English is failing her, like every English word she knows has slipped her mind in fear.

"What's happening, Kira?" Poe looks honestly nervous. "Please, tell me what's happening."

"Bad men. Bad men are coming for me and daddy." She's crying. "Please, you have to go."

"Bad men?"

"Killers. Men who are machines and not men. With guns. They won't care who you are." Please, she prays. Please, please go.

"Like mafia? It's Nebraska, Kira. There's nothing to be afraid of except corn weevils and my dad trying to sing." But he sounds like he's just trying to convoke himself.

"No. Worse. Imperitech."

"Imperitech just owns corn. Bastards, but nothing more than that."

"No. They own people. They used to own me." Used to. Not anymore.

"Why are they coming?"

She doesn't have the time or the words to explain, and he needs to leave. Now.

She's done the trick before. On a security guard back in Jacu Labs, so that they'd give her a night light and loosed her chains. On a suspicious gas station owner in Durango and a border security agent in Juaruz. On a convenience story clerk in Amarillo.

But never on anyone she even knew the name of. It seems unfair, forcing people to do things against there will, looking into their minds and seeing their secrets. It made her feel dirty and wrong.

But now she doesn't have any choice.

"Listen to me." She laces her words in force. "You have to leave right now."

" I can't. My mom and d-"

"Your mom and dad will want you to do this, OK? Can you get away fast?"

"I have a motorcycle."

"Take it and go!"

"What about you?"

"I was born for this."

"For what? To fight?"

Yes. Literally yes. No. No, because she is more than that. She doesn't even know how to explain, not in English, not when things are coming in the night.

"Don't have time for questions. Go!"

He does, out the backstory window. She watches his orange flannel flap in the wind. A few minutes later the lights of a motorcycle switch one, and she watches it as the lights travel down a country road, disappearing into the horizon.

She feels it with a bone-deep certainty. She will meet Poe Dameron again.

The fear rises up. The demons are coming closer, closer, closer. British lady and Coyote are no where in sight. Come back, she pleads. Don't leave me. Come back for me.

This time her claws come in, full and sharp and ready for battle.

\---oOo----

For the first time in years, Chirrut Imwe felt at peace.

He was full from dinner, mildly inebriated, and wearing a fluffy woman's dressing gown. The Dameron's front porch was calm. Shara had sat him down in a rocking chair with a cup of tea, and while he hated to feel old and cosseted- he'd felt like some one's burden for his entire life- it was nice to be able to let his bones rest, for once.

He'd always pictured himself and Baze growing old at the Academy, surrounded by the rising generations of mutant children. Even after Westchester, after the beginning of the end of mutant kind, he'd always pictured Baze next to him until the end.

But the day was drawing to a close, and Baze was still miles away. Baze had given Imperitech the right information too late, Chirrut knew, trying to buy them as much time as possible. Baze had saved their lives in Oklahoma City. He had only known Rey for ten minutes, but Chirrut knew his husband would do anything in his power to keep the girl safe.

And then Jyn had saved them a second time. Saved them from him.

"One of the first things I can always see through the Force is how a person will die." He talks to the night, to the figure standing at the end of the driveway. The figure that looks just like Cassian, coming home from the fields."

"I knew Jyn would die facing the sun after far too long in the dark." He could see it, the light coming and swallowing her.

"I knew the Captain would die holding his heart in his hand." He could see that, too, but he'd come to realize Cassian's heart was far less literal.

"A long, long way in the future, Rey will die of the poison in her body. But she will be surrounded by her great-grandchildren when she goes." He smiled at the thought. Rey's path was not as immediately clear to him as Jyn's was, but she had light ahead. Darkness, too, but decades and decades of light.

"And I'd be die by the killer with a face of a friend." And he'd die know. He'd known for the past few weeks, but it's difficult to accept. The hardest thing for him to accept isn't the going. It's going alone, without Baze.

CSN-24 stepped out of the shadows, claws glinting in the porch light.

For the last time in his life, Chirrut Imwe was right.

**Author's Note:**

> The Damerons are the world's best hosts and don't deserve any of this.
> 
> For a couple reasons I always thought Poe Dameron was hard of hearing.
> 
> I've heard tell that Kira was the original working name for Rey's character, so I just left it there.
> 
> Rey is a lot more talkative than Laura, but there's something about their mannerisms that struck me as very similar. The collecting objects, the stubborn practicality, their shared habits of acquiring gruff older father figures.
> 
> There's an Easter Egg in the names of the kids in Weapon X.


End file.
